


not just about being new (it’s about a change)

by fluffernutter8



Category: Veronica Mars (Movie 2014), Veronica Mars (TV)
Genre: F/M, Gen, Judaism, References to Depression, Religious Discussion, rated for language, redemption arc??? for Dick???
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-24
Updated: 2018-12-24
Packaged: 2019-09-26 08:56:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,123
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17138813
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fluffernutter8/pseuds/fluffernutter8
Summary: Dick moves into Logan's place, and meets his neighbor. Also a rabbi.





	not just about being new (it’s about a change)

**Author's Note:**

> My take on the prompt "Dick converts to Judaism when he gets married and invites LoVe to attend his first Rosh Hashanah feast." Took a while to get to that actual part, because the "Dick converts to Judaism" thing didn't feel authentic until about 3k in.

Gia’s death hits him weird. At first: whole thing’s sad, town must be cursed, maybe he’ll swing by the funeral if there’s not gonna be, like, a wake and shit. Then: he wakes up shaking in a way that he hasn’t since the summer after high school graduation.

“I think you get panic attacks,” a psych major he’d slept with that August told him when he’d passed out in her bed, so he lost her number and after that always made sure have “a thing” in the morning.

A week into nightmares that he refuses to say are nightmares, a feeling of being watched even on the waves, a breathlessness he can’t seem to smoke away, he locks up his house at 4 A.M. and goes to Logan’s.

He knows where the extra key is and lets himself in. Logan’s place is minimal and kinda dusty but familiar, and he collapses onto the couch and sleeps hard into the sunny morning.

There’s obviously no food in the house (it had been listening to Logan get cranky about a mouse problem after his first tour that had brought home the idea that _holy shit_ Logan had gotten adult), but delivery is a miracle and Logan’s got a sweet video game setup - PS4 and an Xbox, so maybe not that adult.

Video games are, Dick decides, the most perfect kind of magic. It’s amazingly easy to zone into them and only need to zone back out to take a piss, call for takeout, or answer the door when it comes. Plenty of times the driver will even leave the stuff outside if Dick asks (he tips well, and it’s less work for them; he’d have done the same).

He isn’t even sure what day it is when there’s a pounding on the door. He ignores it at first, but when it doesn’t go away, he pauses the game and staggers to his thready legs.

“Already met Jesus, don’t need a reintro,” he says as he opens the door. He squints into the dimming afternoon sunlight (guess that at least answers the question of what _time_ of day it is) and scratches at his bare chest, which is probably the sexiest thing an old church lady’s seen in a long time.

But the woman standing furious on the doorstep is no more than thirty, with a sweep of thick brown hair and a librarian thing going on - fashionable glasses, blouse, pencil skirt covering her curves, and a look like she was going to give him a fine.

“Jesus and I are distant cousins at best,” she says, glaring at him. “But I think he’d be the first to tell you to be a good neighbor.”

“What are you talking about?” He crosses his arms. “I’m an _awesome_ neighbor, lady. You haven’t heard a thing from me, and I haven’t knocked on your door looking for a cup of sweetness or whatever.”

“Look,” she says disgustedly. She’s obviously not local; her voice has a New York sharpness that almost seems exaggerated, like it’s from a movie. “It’s Logan’s business if he wants to let you stay here and destroy his house, but it’s mine when you forget trash day for two weeks and the menagerie you’re collecting starts hanging out at my place.”

Dick had, in fact, felt extremely domestic for taking the time to toss his garbage bags and old pizza boxes out of the kitchen and into the carport. He is absolutely not going to ask what the fuck trash day is. “Thanks for the heads up, Neighborhood Watch,” he says instead, giving her a little salute. She rolls her eyes.

“You can do whatever you want in there. Stay there for the next three months, become the neighborhood hermit, I don’t give a damn. But walk your garbage cans to the curb Tuesday mornings, then take them back in at night. You stop having a raccoon problem, and I’ll stop having a problem with you.”

He stares at her blankly for a while; usually that scares people off when they’re hassling him. But she just stares back, eyes narrowed, until he says, “Whatever, dude,” and shuts the door in her face.

From the side window, he watches her stomp across the grass in her low heels and enter the house next door. He returns to his area, tosses himself down on the couch, and reclaims his controller. He unpauses the bobbing character on the screen, then just as quickly repauses. He sets a reminder on his phone for next Tuesday morning. Sure, it’ll be more work, but he’ll stick his stuff in the trash bin and take five minutes to get it down the driveway if it means that he won’t have to deal with the Wicked Bitch of the West ever again.

* * *

He’s graduated to sleeping in Logan’s guest bedroom by two weeks later, and gone to the store a couple of times for beer and chips and Red Bull, so don’t let anyone say he’s a total lazy ass. Sure, he’s on his way to gaming as a profession now, but he remembers to take in the mail at least once a week, so things are going well.

He falls into bed around 2, maybe 3, one night, then shoots awake a short while later. It is still dark. He smokes out the window for a bit, until he’s able to tell himself that he should be able to sleep, and collapses back. He’s out pretty quickly; although he doesn’t delight anymore in the fact that he doesn’t need to set an alarm for the next morning, he’s come to rely on it.

But he’s awoken at the stripper’s crack of dawn (8 A.M. according to the clock) by shouting coming through the still open window. The overlapping children’s voices, so shrill and intense, seem nearly to be in the same room as him. For a second he isn’t sure they aren’t there, but he manages to open one eye and confirm: he’s still alone, except for the sourceless drill of voices.

“Would you shut the fuck up?!” he yells at random, digging his face further into the pillow.

“Could I ask that you not swear about my goddamn nieces and nephews?” says a voice, calm, adult, familiar, and much closer than he would have expected.

He sits up blearily. The window he’d opened last night faces directly into the kitchen next door. The neighbor, who until now has kept her promise to stay out of his way, looks over at him. Her hair is up in a ponytail today, and she looks like she’d rather be anywhere else.

“Harder for me to swear in front of them if they weren’t here,” Dick points out, and she sighs.

“My sisters are both in from New York for a teacher’s conference. I told them and their husbands to take a day off and go touring while I watched the kids.”

“If you’re looking for advice, you came to the wrong guy. I never make mistakes like that.”

“Mistakes like being nice? I’m sure you don’t.”

“Hey, don’t rag on me cause you can’t handle it. Just go take ‘em out for ice cream or whatever.”

“What kind of aunt would I be if I just bribed them with—” There’s a crash behind her, and a small voice shrieks, “Auntie El!” She presses her palms against her eyes, digs her nails into her scalp for a second, and when she emerges, she is calm with purpose.

“Josh, grab my pocketbook,” she shouts back into the house. “Tali, turn off the TV. We’re going to get ice cream.”

Within five minutes, there’s quiet again, but Dick can’t seem to find sleep. He gets up wrapped in a sheet, and goes to settle himself in the living room once more.

* * *

The woman next door is named Eliana Silver according to a misdelivered letter that he sprints over to drop in her mailbox when he knows she’s not at home. She has some kind of boring job, leaving promptly at eight every morning and returning at sixish, always in blouses and skirts and pantsuits. Other than when her family was in town, she seems to live alone, but she goes on a lot of dates. At least once a week, a different guy comes honking at the curb for her, or she drives herself off in a nicer outfit than usual.

One night, he’s smoking out on the front steps when she comes back. (Either she’d narced on him, or Logan had predicted he’d be doing it inside, because he got a pissy email about it.) She steps out of the car and swings her purse over her shoulder, ducking back through the window to say something. She waves from the edge of her front path, smile broad and bright beneath the streetlight. It’s only when the car turns the corner that her shoulders slump and she closes her eyes with a sigh. There on the sidewalk, she strips off her thigh highs (nice) and carries them along with her shoes up the front path.

“Didn’t realize I’d get a show for free here,” Dick calls to her.

“Tip your waitress,” she calls back wearily. Her key is already in the lock when she turns and walks barefoot toward him. She gestures for the joint as she seats herself heavily beside him.

He raises his eyebrows. “Didn’t think you’d even know what weed was.”

“My mild-mannered exterior fool you?” She takes another hit. “I started getting panic attacks in college that were so bad I thought they would kill me. One of my friends told me that smoking would help. It actually made the panic stuff worse in the long run, but that’s when I started. It’s been a while, though.”

Dick nods. It’s weird that she would admit something like that so freely, but he gets it. She hands the joint back and they sit quietly for a while. Finally he takes a drag and asks, “Why do you keep going out with these guys if they just make you want to get blazed?”

She shrugs. “Got to find a husband somehow. It’s either this, or my mom’s paying for my ticket on the singles Jews cruise.” He gives her a so-what kind of look, and she gives him a shove in the shoulder. “My sisters each had their first kid by my age. Clock’s ticking down a little for me to get my plan in action, and I’ve already started getting the lecture about maybe I’m being too picky. I thought it would be this guy Noah after college, but after college was a while ago, and I haven’t found anyone even close since.” She leans her palms back on the concrete of Logan’s steps and looks up. There’s not much to see: the base and surrounding towns might not be exactly bright light, big city, but it’s not in the dark and silent country either.

She shakes herself. “But you’re right - if I immediately want to get high after meeting someone, it’s probably a bad sign for the rest of my life.” Glancing at her watch, she stands. “Come on,” she says, jerking her head toward her house. “It’s time for Chopped.”

His game is still paused in Logan’s living room; he’d probably be able to see the shifting blue light if he picked the right window. He stands and follows her.

“What’s your name, anyway?” she asks as they walk together across the lawn. He tells her. Eliana looks him up and down briefly. “Of course you are,” she says, resigned, and opens her door to let them in.

* * *

Food Network quickly becomes the most reliable thing in his life. From his window, he can see when Eliana gets home, and he comes over promptly for double episodes of Chopped every night that her lights are on.

On the fifth night, he half listens to her berating a guy for using one of the basket ingredients as a garnish (“That should get you automatically chopped! I don’t care how fresh and fun it is, or raw produce blah blah blah, you’re sinning against both presentation and creativity.”) while he slips an arm around her shoulder.

She turns toward him so fast that her hair nearly takes out his eye.

“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” she asks, fiercely polite.

“Come on,” he says, spreading his hands, trying to recover with some dignity or at least salvage things. “We’ve known each other for a while now.”

“Not really,” she counters. “And anyway, I told you that I was looking to _date_ , not bone down on my couch with some guy who’s been squatting next door.”

“So let’s go on a date.” Really, he should be commended for his patience, and for not spitting out the words waiting on his tongue.

But apparently she didn’t get that memo, because she just moves further away on the couch and says, “Look, maybe Casablancas is a Sfardi name, but I’m pretty sure you’re not exactly the kind of guy I’m looking to date.”

It’s not like it’s the first time he’s heard a girl say that, but it might be the first time he’s heard one sound serious about it. She’s not looking at him through her lashes, begging him with her eyes to convince her that she’s wrong, or to do something bad just this once. She looks like she’d much rather be watching Alex’s acidic commentary during the first round of judging and not thinking about him - or a date with him, or sex with him - much at all.

“How am I not the kind of guy you want to date?” he asks harshly, even though he knows he’ll probably lose. But he’s still pretty loaded, and he’s got a college diploma, even if it took him five years, so he’s got something to counter whatever she’s going to say.

She looks at him a little puzzled, as if she’s already told him and he missed it. “Well,” she says slowly, “you’re not Jewish.”

He snorts. “How fucking discriminatory.” Eliana’s boring nine-to-five is as an HR rep; he knows that will get under her skin, and it does. She glares daggers at him, no longer even glancing over at the TV.

“It’s discriminatory like wanting to date someone with a sense of humor or who likes Jane Austen or who doesn’t have kids is discriminatory.”

“No, it’s like only wanting to date white people, and if I said that, you’d tell me I’m racist.”

“And I’d be right.” She stands. “Look, I think it says something that you don’t get what I’m talking about. I’m looking to marry a Jewish guy for the same reasons as anyone. I want someone who gets my culture, who won’t mess up my kitchen, and who already agrees about how we’ll raise the kids. And I want to make sure that when the next pogrom comes, he’ll be dead next to me instead of sneaking away thinking about the bullet he dodged.”

She’s not yelling, but that’s way too intense. For a minute, Dick doesn’t know what to say, which is a strange and different feeling than stopping himself from saying anything. “Woah,” he finally says, “maybe you’re right.”

“Yes,” she says, a bit exasperated. “And maybe it’s also time for you to go. The garnish guy got through to the next round, and I have to put all my energy into getting him chopped next.”

* * *

Dick considers just leaving. He ordered a gaming chair so he’d have more options than the floor or the couch, but his back is still practically giving its two weeks notice, and at least in Neptune, Rosalia comes every few days to stave off a biohazard situation like the one developing in Logan’s place.

But he can’t seem to get himself to do it. It’s always easier to change a cartridge or order another pizza than to force himself into his truck.

One night, the delivery guy is some new dude who doesn’t speak English and therefore doesn’t pay attention when Dick yells to just leave the bag by the door. The words that they exchange, maybe a dozen in all, are the first time he’s talked face to face with another person in...probably a week? Which is just too damn sad to contemplate.

The light next door is on, and he’s got a shitton of food in the bag. Before he can really think about it, he’s knocking.

“Hey,” he says when Eliana answers. “I know Chopped isn’t on yet, but if you were hungry, we could eat together.” He holds out the heavy sack, then adds hastily, “Not a come on, or whatever. If you couldn’t tell.”

She looks awkward, glancing over her shoulder into the house. “Sorry, Dick, it’s Friday night. I have guests.”

He isn’t entirely sure what ‘it’s Friday night’ is supposed to signify, but that doesn't matter. He steps back. “Sure, yeah, sorry. I’ll see you later.”

From behind him, she sighs, a sharp, harassed noise. “I’m not sending you back to eat takeout alone. I’m not a monster. Come inside. We’ll set an extra place.”

Her dining room is all decked out, a neatly ironed cloth on the table set with china, candles burning down on the sidebar. A half dozen guests look over at him curiously as he enters. He gets a little disapproval from a couple of them when they see his ragged shorts and T-shirt, but they can fuck right off; he didn’t get the invite with the dress code, so they should be glad he’s wearing a shirt at all.

“This is Dick,” Eliana tells everyone. “He’s been staying at Logan’s place next door.” She pushes up her glasses and goes into the kitchen, reaching down a fresh place setting from the cabinet. Dick’s glad he put down the takeout bag in the foyer - seems like the kind of thing it would be weird to hold in front of these people eating what’s probably homemade chicken soup out of their nice bowls - but it leaves him standing awkwardly without anything in his hands. He shoves them in his pockets instead and looks around at the place, like he’s never been here before.

“So how do you know Logan?” one of the people at the table says politely. She’s a skinny older chick with sandy hair in a poofy bun, and glasses on a chain. Not one of the ones who looked at him weird earlier.

“Went to high school together,” Dick says shortly. “And college.” Then he adds suspiciously, “How do you know Logan?”

The lady laughs. “He comes over for Friday night dinner sometimes when he isn’t on cruise and doesn’t have plans. Eliana asked me to teach him how to make my potato kugel so he would stop begging for it.”

Dick doesn’t know what she’s talking about, but luckily Eliana comes back with his plate and cutlery tucked under her arm, and a steaming bowl of soup in her hands. She sets the things down next to the older lady, and Dick tries not to feel relieved about that.

Once Eliana has taken her seat again, she directs a comment to the guy on her right, who answers, and conversation picks up again. Dick sits quietly, spooning up the soup. It’s a warm night, but it still goes down smoothly. Everyone passes around a basket of bread, which is fresh and a little squishy on the inside and _awesome_. He wishes he’d taken a second slice as soon as it’s gone.

“So,” says the old lady in a quiet voice, clearly talking only to Dick. “How do you spend your time these days?”

It’s obvious that she’s trying to ask him about his job without embarrassing him if he doesn’t have one, but somehow the idea that he’s so clearly directionless pisses him off more. “My family’s in real estate,” he says shortly. And then, to avoid further questions, he tacks on, “What’s your thing?”

She passes her bowl up toward the head of the table where Eliana is collecting them before she turns back to answer Dick. “Oh, I’m the rabbi.”

Dick’s seen a rabbi - he went to _sweet_ parties for Emily Goldberg and Derek Adler and Ethan Hirschbaum back in middle school - and they definitely didn’t look like this grandma hippie chick. “I thought rabbis were, you know, dudes,” he says, serving himself chicken from the platter that comes around, then adding roasted potatoes on the side. More food keeps appearing, too. The whole meal is like mini Thanksgiving or something.

The rabbi lady laughs. “Sometimes they are dudes. And sometimes they’re not. Sometimes they’re young, and sometimes they’re not. And sometimes they’re career navy wives who raised three children and decided to go to rabbinical school at age forty.”

“Why’d you do that?”

She stabs a piece of broccoli. “I like reading. I like asking questions. I find satisfaction in helping people through significant or difficult times in their lives.”

That should be the end of the conversation. None of those would make Dick’s list of top ninety favorite activities. But instead he finds himself thinking of Gia, of Beav— of Cassidy, of his dad, of _himself_ , and asking, “So what do you think happens when we die? Especially if we’re kinda fu— messed up people?”

“Well, I’d challenge you to find anyone who hasn’t made mistakes, even serious ones. So I think you’re asking if all of us, or at least most of us, go to hell.” The rabbi loads her fork with salad, puts it into her mouth, and shrugs. “Not really my department.”

“How the hell not?” Dick demands, pretending he doesn’t notice the glances their end of the table is suddenly getting.

The rabbi waits until everyone’s looked away again before she says, “There’s been thousands of years of discussion about what hell and whether hell and why hell, and no one’s really been able to come up with an answer. Which means that the real answer is that there are many answers and we don’t know which or even if one is correct, so I don’t usually concern myself with the question. I’m more the ‘Do justly now, love mercy now’ type. Never too late to get less fucked up.”

He chews through most of the food on his plate thinking about that, and also getting the image of her cursing out of his head. Finally he asks, “So what is your department?”

“Oh, lots of things. Helping kids get ready for their bar or bat mitzvah, or new parents choose a name for their baby. Counseling people dealing with infertility, or the death of a loved one, or struggling with issues like health or relationships or employment. Officiating weddings. Always having something pithy to say about the weekly Torah portion. Making sure that everyone in the community has access to charitable services if they need them. And fundraising. An unfortunate amount of fundraising.”

“Do you ever talk to people who aren’t, like, Jews?”

“I must have been mistaken about what we were doing now,” she says, clearly amused with herself. She looks at him over the tops of her glasses. “But typically I recommend professional counselors to people who are struggling outside of a religious context.”

“Counselors don’t do shit for me,” he says, shaking his head. His mom had tried to make him go to one years back. Complete waste of time.

The rabbi sets down her fork, scrutinizing him closely. “If you’re really certain about that, I’ll give you my card. I’m in my office on most weekday mornings.”

Dick can’t make himself leave the house Monday morning, or Tuesday. Wednesday he gets in the car but just ends up driving himself around the block and parking again.

Thursday he parks outside the squat temple building and spends fifteen minutes getting himself inside. There’s a secretary whose smile he ignores as he goes over to the door marked “Rabbi’s office” and knocks.

The rabbi’s hair is long down her back today, which only makes her look more like she’s time-traveled directly from Woodstock. But the look she levels at him is serious. “I was wondering if you would come,” she says, and swings the door open.

* * *

It’s not like it automatically becomes a regular thing. It doesn’t change things much at all, really. He shows up sometimes, talks for a while, and goes home. Except that he starts to see check-in texts from the rabbi pop up on his phone that make him realize he hasn’t actually breathed fresh air in a few days. Except that sometimes he stops gaming for a while because the rabbi’s given him some article or book to read. Except that he’s gone back to Eliana’s to watch Chopped or whatever a few times and ended up asking theological questions when he used to barely know what theological meant. Except that he’s started arguing with the rabbi because she doesn’t care and says it’s all part of it. Except that a couple of times he’ll stick around for services that he doesn’t understand, watching from the back because he likes watching people singing together like this, likes hearing the community chatter and gossip and call for volunteers to help with this Hebrew school trip or cooking meals for that family with a parent in the hospital.

People start to recognize him eventually, coming over to say hello and studiously avoid asking what the hell he’s doing there. He gets a couple invitations for meals that he declines.

And then one day, the rabbi opens her door to him and says, “Nu, Dick, are you going to go to an actual counselor, or are we going to start doing this for real?”

“I thought you weren’t about that missionary life,” he counters, because she’d mentioned that months ago.

“I don’t think it’s missionizing when you keep showing up at my door,” she points out. “We’re starting a new Basics of Conversion class. You should come.”

He doesn’t decide to go to the class, he just kinda shows up. Weirdly, he’s already an A student about some stuff, and has never even heard of some of the other shit. The list of topics they’re going to cover is basically all rules - rules about holidays, about food, about charity - and at first his instinct is to say, “Fuck that noise,” and bounce. But then he thinks about the times he knew the rules and ignored them because they didn’t apply to him, because he knew he could pay his way out of any trouble that came, and wonders if maybe a couple God-given commandments would really be that bad.

There isn’t one person in his conversion class who he’d have hung out with even six months ago, which is a weird thought. Now if he went up to Marco who surfs Coral Cove or Chip Diller from college or Enbom from high school and asked what they thought about the reasons behind suffering, they would probably assume he was on a bad trip. He almost doesn’t believe it, and he’s the one living it.

Logan’s supposed to come back in a little over a month, and Dick’s not sure what to do about that. Before, he’d have assumed he could stay ‘til whenever - Carrie, Bonnie, whatever, was usually pretty chill about it, maybe because she was on the road a lot - but Veronica’s already sent an email basically evicting him the week before the boat comes back into dock. Like she’s Logan’s boss or his next of kin. Like she’s even been to Logan’s new place.

He stares from the front steps around at the now-familiar neighborhood. Even as he does, he hears the expected sound of Eliana returning from yet another date.

“Where does this guy fall on the scale?” he calls over before the car has fully reversed out of the driveway.

She finishes waving the guy off and walks toward her door. “Not completely offensive, claims to have a magical brisket recipe, and he’s got a dog, so he’s moving to the top of the maybes.”

He didn’t see anything about brisket on the class outline, so it can’t be that important. It’s weird how often these questions come up and leave him wondering. How many more nuances can there be for him to get schooled on?

“Hey,” Dick calls as Eliana unlocks her door. “If I convert, will you at least give me a chance at a maybe?”

She looks dubious, leaning a hip against the doorframe. “Let’s see how it goes,” she says. “The ratio of people who wash out of conversion class isn’t in your favor. Also, you’re kind of an asshole and I don’t really have the time for that. Rabbi Levy’s going to have to work a minor miracle besides the Judaism bit before you even get considered for a maybe.”

Well, it’s not a no.

* * *

Ellie has always gone home for at least Rosh HaShana, but the days fall out badly this year, and flights are astronomical, so she tells Dick with a sigh and squared shoulders that she’s going to host a dinner herself at the last minute.

(This serves as sufficient invitation now that they’re engaged. Luckily he turned down the Abelmans’ offer, knowing from El’s stories about the enormous meals her mother would prepare for the Jewish New Year, the cousins who were invited, and the comparisons of this service to that one, that they would either end up partying down in New York or trying to recreate it in Cali.)

The menu is traditional and taken care of basically as soon as the decision is made, but the guest list is a little trickier to put together. Their synagogue community isn’t that big to begin with, and most people have already made plans. Ellie manages to pull something together by gathering in a few of the smaller parties, but then she turns to him.

“What about the people from your class?” she asks. She has her pen out and tapping against her notebook, her glasses shoved up her face, neither of which are good signs for him. “Anyone to add from there?”

He flips through the list and shakes his head, which just makes her glare. “There must be someone you can invite.”

It hits him suddenly. For all the threats to get Dick out of Logan’s place, Veronica had pretty easily accepted Logan into her place instead (Dick know that they use his place when necessary too, which is chill), and Dick has stayed put for the past couple of years.

“I’ll ask Logan and Veronica,” he says, pulling out his phone to text Logan. “Easier than sending a thank you note.”

Eliana gives him a thorough, knowing glance as she adds their names to her list. With what he’s told her about his history with Veronica Mars, there’s reason to be wary.

The little lady in question shows up with a pretty jar of local honey in hand and Logan in tow. She’s sweet with Ellie, thanking her for hosting them and complimenting the table setup with enough familiarity that Dick starts to suspect that she’s done some research.

Or maybe it’s just Veronica Mars, she of the trickiest sleeves he knows.

Everyone else is already there, coming together directly from the evening service. They’re chatting about the first of the rabbi’s many sermons they’ll hear over the holiday, about favorite traditions and hopes for the coming year.

“It’s good to see you, man,” Logan says, and they have enough time to exchange a quick hug, pounding each other on the back, before it’s time to be seated.

Eliana does kiddush. Dick’s been practicing it, but his Hebrew skills are barely above toddler level. El holds the cup steadily, the words flowing with ease, and everything begins.

The fresh challah that Ellie made, amazing as always, is round to represent the cycle of the year. They all dip apple slices into honey with a wish for a sweet year to come. And, while Dick hasn’t actually been to Rosh HaShana dinner at Mrs. Silver’s yet, Eliana’s menu and her cooking live up to expectations absolutely. Logan and Veronica, a bit out of their depth, join in gamely enough. (Dick sees her leaning over to whisper at a couple points; definitely at least some quick Wikipedia going on.)

Dick is the one who stands and goes to the kitchen when it’s time for dessert. He made the brownies (from a mix, but it’s still an accomplishment, and they taste better that way anyway) and El made honey cake that she assured him no one would touch.

“Oh, Veronica, would you mind giving Dick a hand? It’s the good china and I don’t want him to try carrying too much.”

Even knowing that this was coming, even though they’d talked about this Dick freezes. He feels suddenly ridiculous in his nicely ironed oxford. He wants his wetsuit and his surfboard under his arm. He wishes the rabbi hadn’t been hosting her own kids for dinner.

Veronica stands and waits as he puts the dessert onto trays and gets out the nice little plates, the pretty teacups. She seems perfectly happy to say nothing to him.

She loads up her hands - she was a waitress a long time back, he remembers vaguely - and turns to return to the dining room.

“Mars,” he croaks. “I’m sorry.”

“For what, Dick?” she asks wearily. She seems burdened by the very idea of continuing to be around him. Turning back toward him is apparently exhausting.

From the dining room, he can hear their oldest guests, Herb and Lois Green, launching into a story about their recently born great-granddaughter. Logan seems to be listening attentively, although it might equally be the face he’s developed for when some big shot’s giving a speech to the fleet. Dick lowers his voice a little anyway.

“All that shit I did and said in high school to start with. And college. And for, like, the ten years after.” He swallows. “But the thing with you and Cassidy during that party in high school...That was messed up. It wasn’t funny for me to leave you passed out in there with him. It was stupid and dangerous, and I wanted you to know that I regret it and if I were in the same position now, I’d never have done that. I wanted to tell you that I apologize. I’m sorry, Veronica.”

She steps toward him and neither her petite frame nor the flower-patterned plates in her hands detract from the fury projected toward him. “If you picked me to take your twelve step confession so I can just wipe away all your sins, you made a bad choice.”

“No. It’s not— It’s Rosh HaShana.”

“And?”

“It’s the time when we… In the prayers we apologize to God or whatever, but we also have to take the time to apologize to other people who we’ve hurt. And I never apologized to you.”

“‘God or whatever?’” she says mockingly. “That’s some really professional grade religion you’ve got going there, Dick.”

“Actually, within Judaism there are multiple accepted conceptions of God,” he snaps back without meaning to, and it’s probably the way he sounds like a freshman religion course that has her backing up a little and even looking like she could laugh.

“So what happens if I don’t accept your apology? You get in trouble with the big guy?” She still says it like that might not be such a bad thing.

“I have to apologize two more times. Then it’s like I was forgiven.”

“Three times?” Veronica frowns. “I don’t know if three times is enough, considering.”

Dick shrugs. “You can take it up with the rabbis. Those fuckers have been talking about it long enough, and they’re kinda into opinions.”

From the next room, Eliana calls, “You two okay in there?” and Dick calls back, “Yeah, babe, we’ll be there in a sec.”

For the first time that night, Veronica really seems to look at him. He knows that she’d have been able to describe him for a police sketch if necessary the second she walked in the door, but she actually for once seems to be looking _at_ him. “You know, I never would have expected it, but the Jewish thing actually seems to work for you.”

Dick shrugs. She’s right on both counts. “Well, matchmaker, matchmaker, or whatever the fuck.”

“Eloquent as always,” Veronica says on a sigh, and goes in to deliver the honey cake.

**Author's Note:**

> \- I originally had Eliana as a kosher kitchen, Solomon Schechter type Conservative, but in the end because of where Dick ended up on the religious spectrum, the community is more Reform/egal/non denominational.  
> \- Sfardim are Jews from Spain, Portugal, and North Africa - she's saying that maybe his name isn't the kind she's used to because he's not from a Jewish family from Eastern Europe.  
> \- Kiddush is the blessing on wine or grape juice that typically starts off a Shabbat or holiday meal.  
> \- Dick's Hebrew name didn't come up in here naturally, but it would be Naphtali because he didn't seem like a Refael or a David and the name meaning is about struggling/wrestling.  
> \- Written mostly while listening to the Koolulam group version of Al Kol Ele ft. Shlomi Shabat (youtube.com/watch?vl=en&v=oxzR9Z-kG6Q) because I needed something about finding a community, and about the complex and contradictory nature of life. Also because Ben Yefet brings my energy level right up.


End file.
